Written by

Zach Osterman
zach.osterman@indystar.com

Kent State coach Rob Senderoff still speaks regularly with Kelvin Sampson about basketball and coaching. But they don't talk about the NCAA penalty Sampson endured for the past five years, a penalty that ended Sunday.

The NCAA's "show cause" sanction essentially kept Sampson out of college basketball. For the past five years, he has been an assistant coach in the NBA, currently with the Houston Rockets.

Sampson's show cause was the last of the sanctions for "major" recruiting violations that forced the coach out of Bloomington and plunged the program into a years-long rebuilding project. ...